Paris (AFP)
Didier Guillaume, one of the two ministers whose presence Wednesday at a bullfight in Bayonne triggered a sling on social networks, regretted Monday to have "shocked" advocates of animal welfare, opposed to bullfighting.
"I regret that it could have shocked a number of citizens who are against these practices," said the Minister of Agriculture, who spoke on France Info.
His presence at a bullfight with his colleague in charge of the Cohesion of the territories, Jacqueline Gourault, had been revealed by a photo of the daily Sud-Ouest, triggering a small avalanche of criticism of elected ecologists in particular.
"What has been terrible on social networks has been the political and political recovery made by others, but I understand it and I'm sorry if I could shock," Guillaume said on Monday.
MEP Yannick Jadot lamented in a message on Twitter that "the minister in charge of animal welfare is witnessing a bullfight". The show, in which the matador Daniel Luque, considered as one of the greatest of his generation, received a triumph after having dominated six bulls, was moreover qualified as "massacre" by the spokesman of the ecologist party Julien Bayou.
Monday morning, Mr. Guillaume wished that one does not summarize "the animal abuse or the fight for the animal welfare to a photo in a spectacle".
"I am the Prime Minister of Agriculture to have a collaborator, a consultant in the cabinet, in charge of animal welfare, I am the Prime Minister of Agriculture who has perpetuated the Slaughterhouse Supervisory Board", a- he explained.
"I would not (...) miss all the work that is done, the measures that will be taken in September, which have never been taken on the fight for animal welfare", he added without further precision.
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